


A Fish Hook; An Open Eye

by mamestuck



Category: Coraline (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-16 22:55:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1364809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamestuck/pseuds/mamestuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nearly a decade later, Coraline and Wybie re-open the door to the Other World. Revenge, as it happens, is served equally well piping-hot.</p><p>Oblique references to attempted rape and hard drugs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fish Hook; An Open Eye

       Wybie Lovat roared through the narrow mountain roads, his headlight causing ghoulish shadows to stretch through the ditches and underbrush. He wasn’t going anywhere in particular. It was Friday night, he was seventeen, and was basically not a dude encumbered with a lot of tasks or plans. Dark music blasted through the headphones he had built into his motorcycle helmet, and his smudged visor pulsed with the bass.  
       Preoccupied with wondering why he was partyless and dateless on this, the eve of the weekend, and wondering if all dudes his age felt this way or maybe if it was just him, he noticed a slight figure stumbling along the shoulder of the winding road. He screeched to a halt, gravel spraying. Setting one foot on the ground and balancing the bike between his thighs, he lifted his helmet to see the startled and miserable face of his best friend and neighbor, Coraline Jones.  
       He dropped his helmet to the ground, still emitting a faint throbbing of music, and scrutinized her. Altogether she was a sore sight. Her mascara had run and her eyes were framed by smudgy black rings that made her look more wide-eyed and pitiful. She was wearing a hip little black dress, which had a torn strap and a rip halfway up the seam at her thigh. She was carrying a pair of malicious looking pumps in one hand and a small clutch in the other. Dirt from the road speckled her lower legs and feet.  
       “What the fuck, Jonesey?” Wybie wasted no time asking. He set the kickstand on his bike and rushed the three strides over to her, gripping her goosebumped shoulders and staring her in the eye.  
       “I’m walking home. My date did not proceed as planned,” she said in a stony and numb voice that was threatening to break into a sob at any moment.  
       “C’mon,” he mumbled as he bundled her up into his leather moto jacket, and led her gently back towards his bike. He scooped up the helmet from where it fell and plopped it onto her head, thoughtfully killing the ipod. He swung his leg back over his seat and she dutifully scootched onto the seat behind him. Then he revved up his engine, swung a tight 180, and headed back down the road the way he had come.

       After Coraline had showered and Wybie had prepared some healing cocoa, the pair settled down in the hard wooden chairs around Coraline’s kitchen table. The girl pulled her knees up against her chest and gripped the edge of her seat with her bare toes. She had changed into a t-shirt and sweatpants, but still huddled within Wybie’s ancient leather coat.  
       “I just don’t get it, Wy,” she said quietly, staring resolutely and blankly into the depths of her chipped ceramic mug. “Gavin seemed so chill and rad. And then he goes and, and...”  
       “He didn’t---” breathed Wybie, eyes wide with anger.  
       “No, no!” Coraline hastily corrected. “Well, at least not--Well, he tried. We were making out in the car and he starts getting all handsy. I keep pushing him away, kind of thinking he’d take the hint, but then I realize I’m actually, like, fighting to keep him from shoving his hand up into my dress. I didn’t have time to think, I felt like I couldn’t even breathe.” Hot tears spilled out of her eyes and her voice lurched up an octave. “I started screaming and hitting him with the heel of my shoe. I thought that would be an amazing weapon for some reason.” She paused for a bitter sob. “I somehow found the door handle and basically crawled backwards or more like fell out into a ditch. I kicked the door shut and started screaming that I’d call the fucking cops, which was a bluff because you can never get any fucking reception out here. I started to, like, try to get down into the woods in case he tried to follow me, but he just peeled out and drove off. So I started walking home.” She ran her thumb over one of the angry red blisters that ringed her feet, and closed her eyes tightly, causing more tears to spill over and run down her face. “Last fucking time I’ll ever get dolled up for some guy,” she mumbled bitterly.  
Wybie’s adolescent ur-brain was frothing over with jealousy and blind rage.  
       “I’ll fucking kill him. Just wait until next time he runs into me. Then he’ll see what he gets for fucking with you. I’ll end him.”  
       “I’d like to claw his eyes out,” Coraline spat through her tears. “I’d like to make him see what it feels like to be fucking trapped by some fucking sadistic maniac.”  
       Then they both paused, and made slow, knowing eye contact as it dawned on them why this spiteful imagery seemed so intimately familiar.  
       “You don’t mean---” started Wybie, tilting his head slightly in disbelief.  
       Coraline’s eyes went wide and she shook her head. “I wasn’t, like, thinking of that!”  
       They resumed staring at their respective mugs of cocoa, mulling over dim and troubling memories of the summer when they were eight.  
       Coraline was the first to speak again. “If anyone deserves to disappear off the face of the earth, it’s him.”  
       At length, Wybie spoke again. “You know, I haven’t thought about that place in a long time. I keep almost convincing myself it’s just some dumb bullshit we made up when we were kids.”  
       “No!” Coraline said, fiercely and indignantly. “You know that’s not true. You saw the hand!”  
       “Right, right!” Wybie corrected hastily. “I know it’s a real thing. It’s just--- It’s too crazy to believe sometimes... Not crazy-crazy!” he corrected again after a warning glare from Coraline.  
       “I haven’t thought about it in a while either,” she admitted. “And I haven’t been, like, eager to open that door back up. But we could find out easily enough if all of that… stuff,” she waved her hand vaguely, “is still back there. We just need that key.”  
       “Oh, if it is still back there, lover-boy has another thing coming,”  
       “Desperate times, desperate measures,” Coraline concluded matter-of-factly yet still a touch fearfully.

       The next day they both woke up early. Coraline accompanied Wybie to his garage workshop, where he rummaged around until he found a strong magnet, a coil of rope, and some epoxy. He fastened the magnet to the end of the rope and waited a minute for it to set. Then he grabbed some back-up rope in case the first coil proved insufficient, and a lighter to bond the ends together. Then the pair left the garage in silence, heading out across the path that led out from the Lovat house, up the hill, and towards the abandoned well at the base of the woods.  
       When they arrived, they both knelt in the dirt by the mouth of the well, and Wybie hauled up the wooden cover. He methodically spooled out the rope with the magnet until there was no more slack left. He locked eyes with Coraline and shrugged, drawing the magnet back out again before twisting the ends of the two nylon cords together and melting them fast with his lighter. He blew on the fresh join and pinched it between his fingers, then lowered the magnet back down the impossibly deep well. Much longer than they thought it should have taken, the magnet hit bottom and Wybie was just feeding slack into the well. He tugged back up on it until he felt the magnet just grazing the well’s bottom, then swept it along carefully along the area of the well until he felt something catch. Both he and Coraline felt their hearts leap into their throats with anticipation, and Wybie drew up the rope again hastily.  
       Sure enough, after what seemed like an age, the end of the rope came into sight again, and clinging to the magnet was a heavy black key.

       Coraline snatched it off the magnet and gripped it tightly, nails digging into her palm. “Let’s find out what this sucker can do,” she said, and they both tore off back down the hill, Wybie abandoning the rope in a haphazard pile by the gaping well. As they reached Coraline’s house they slowed to a walk, feigning nonchalance to avoid suspicion. Luckily both of Coraline’s parents were hard at work on their computers, and would not have noticed if the kids had been screaming bloody murder.  
       They slipped through the door in the side of the looming, pink Victorian mansion that led to the flat Coraline shared with her parents. Still maintaining a death-grip on the key, Coraline led the way up the creaky stairs and into an unused parlor on the second floor. It was dusty and full of cardboard boxes stuffed with old tax returns and catalogue drafts. A weak, cloudy mid-morning light pushed its way through the small, high windows and illuminated a miasma of dust motes that wafted lazily through the air, stirred up by Coraline and Wybie’s sudden entrance.  
They knelt on the floor next to a small door in the wall, more like an access panel to a cubbyhole, that had been painted and wallpapered over several times. They yellowing wallpaper was peeling up along the ragged edge where Coraline’s mother had sliced it with a box cutter almost a decade ago. Nobody had disturbed it since.  
       “You may have the honors,” Wybie said in an attempt at graciousness, but secretly relieved to shirk that dubious task.  
       Without further ado, Coraline shoved the key into the rusty lock and turned it roughly. She jerked the door open on its stiff hinges, and both friends leaned imperceptibly forward, eyes wide with anticipation about what lay beyond. Almost against all hope, the mouth of a tunnel yawned back into the wall behind the door. The circular passageway was choked with cobwebs and rubbish, and a stale grey wind swept through it, rustling the hair of the onlookers and making them squint.  
       It was nasty and decrepit, and unsurprisingly looked a lot smaller than it had when they were kids. But it was unmistakable. It was a passage to the Other World.

***

       They spent the rest of the weekend camped out in front of the Jones family TV, eating bowls of cereal and watching zombie movies. In between DVDs they hashed out a vague plan, but were not entirely eager to dwell on it too much. They far preferred to escape into the comforting, mind-numbing violence on-screen.  
       “Do you think we have the right idea about all of this?” ventured Coraline hesitantly while Wybie rifled through her collection of bootleg b-movies for the next selection.  
       “After what he almost did to you?” Wybie rejoined hotly. “He’s lucky I’m not going aiming to break every bone in his body. This is letting him off easy.”  
       “Yeah, I guess. And besides, it’s not like we’ll be the ones doing anything to him. We’ll just lead him over there, and then it’s all his choice what happens next.”  
       They both knew what would happen next. Or, what they hoped would happen next. Coraline savored the image of the villainous Gavin being out-villained by the Beldam. She shook her head briskly and tried not to reflect too much on her last brush with either of them.  
       Occasionally, Coraline’s dad would pass through the living room on his way between the kitchen and his office. With a fresh cup of coffee in one hand, he ruffled Coraline’s messy blue hair with the other, saying “How’s my twitchy witchy girl today?” then shuffling back off upstairs to keep working. She curled her mouth miserably and wished she could just sink down into the couch. She didn’t deserve sweet pet names, she wasn’t her daddy’s little girl anymore. She hadn’t told either of her parents about her adventure in the world of grown-up romance. They would positively freak out, and probably never let her go on another date again, and use this as evidence of her not being mature enough to handle herself or not knowing what she was doing. Or something. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell them about her plan for her next date with Gavin.

***

       On Monday morning, Coraline woke up before her alarm, and spent a long while staring up at the ceiling, not moving. After a while she decided she couldn’t put it off any longer and got up. She tugged on her school uniform and perfunctorily ran her fingers through her cobalt hair as a substitute for combing. She had finished lacing up her shoes and was about to head downstairs when a thought struck her. She went to her closet and rummaged through an old trunk shoved way at the back, which was full of old stuff that she had outgrown both figuratively and literally but had been too sentimental to chuck or give to Goodwill. When she was about to give up from frustration, she found what she was looking for.  
       It was an old cloth doll that had been her constant companion the summer she had moved to Oregon. Last time she had seen it, it was stitched up to look like her father on one side and her mother on the other. After she had locked the door to the Other World and thrown away the key, she had thought about burning it, which did not seem quite right given that it was an effigy of her parents. What if it had some kind of voodoo power? Not knowing what else to do with it, she had stuffed it into the hope chest her eight-year-old self had used as a receptacle for assorted nonsense.  
But it was no longer a likeness of her parents. Staring up at her with its cold button eyes and little stitched smirk was a maudlin double of Gavin. The doll’s yarn hair was tied back in a little ponytail and its little black jeans were cris-crossed with distressed rips. It even had a cloyingly embroidered little Ramones t-shirt. An ember of hatred glowed beneath the calcified layers of Coraline’s numb innards. She stared the little doll right in its dead eyes and jabbed it with her finger.  
       “Depravity, thy name is Gavin,” she pronounced.  
       She stuffed the figure into her messenger bag and left the zipper open a couple inches so that only its creepy eyes were peeking out. During her last run-in with the Other-Worldly, the dolls acted as little spy-cams to drum up specs for the illusion that would be spun for the unknowing victim. With luck, it would conjure Gavin up an irresistible show.  
She heard Wybie rev his motorcycle a couple times, the daily signal that she needed to haul ass to avoid tardiness. She swung the bag over her shoulder and ran down the stairs, skidding to a halt in the foyer to give her mom a kiss good-bye.  
       “Deathtrap,” her mom muttered.  
       Coraline froze for a moment, then relaxed, relieved, when she realized her mom was only referring to the motorcycle. She grabbed her helmet off the coat hook by the front door, dashed out of the house, and plopped behind Wybie on his bike. He revved again and they were off, down the winding road towards Ashland High School.

***

       She spotted Gavin in the hall between first and second periods. He was leaning with his arm outstretched against a locker, grinning nonchalantly, next to a girl Coraline didn’t know, who looked like she was ready to crawl into herself and disappear. They both turned to face Coraline as she approached, clearing her throat loudly.  
       “Oh jeez, what happened to you?” Coraline blurted out, noticing an appreciable shiner on the girl’s left eye.  
       “Volleyball,”  
       “Doorknob,” the girl and Gavin replied simultaneously.  
       Coraline arched her eyebrows. “Right... Anyway, Gavin, can I talk to you for a minute?”  
       He threw a wink at the girl, who kind of slunk off and disappeared into the crowd of kids choking the hall.  
       “Sure babe, what’s up? Walk and talk though, don’t want to be late for AP History.”  
       She fell into step next to him as they made their way down the hall towards their next class which they conveniently shared.  
       “I, uh, I wanted to apologize for what happened on Friday night. You showed me a really good time, and I had no right to treat you that way.” She had to force the words out, and hoped he wouldn’t notice anything amiss in her cloying tone. “ And I was wondering if you wanted to come over my place after school today?”  
       Gavin graced her with a winning smile. “Oh, that’s how it is? I don’t know, I’m feeling kind of tired today.”  
       “I guess I realize I was being kind of a frigid bitch, and I want to make it up to you?”  
       “Twist my arm,” he said. “Fine, meet me in the parking lot after last period.”  
       They arrived at the classroom, and both slipped into their desks without further discussion, just before the tardy bell rang.

       Of course, Coraline didn’t pay a lick of attention during the lecture. She felt Gavin’s eyes burning holes into her skull from the back row. She reached into her bag to grab a pen, then subtly arranged the bag so that the doll had a line of sight in the approximate direction of its doppelganger. “There, now who’s watching who,” she thought. She spent the rest of the lecture doodling a Voodoo doll with a million pins and nails sticking out of it. “I should never have tried to hurt you, Coraline!!!” said a woeful little speech bubble. She underlined the word “never” repeatedly with her ballpoint, pressing down hard.

       After school she hurried to the back entrance of the school to give Wybie the high-sign from across the student parking lot. The plan was for him to provide a loose cover, not too obvious but within striking distance in case anything untoward went down. He would follow them home on his motorcycle, then wait until they were indoors and follow them inside the house. They planned to have the Cat run messages between them once Coraline and Gavin were on the other side of the little door, although neither of them had actually consulted the Cat about this yet. In short, they were going to wing it.  
Coraline loitered around the parking lot for a while, pacing aimlessly and waiting for Gavin to show. “What’s keeping him?” she wondered to herself. Had he decided to stand her up? No, his car was still there, she could recognize it in the back of the lot. Maybe he had forgotten one of his assignments. Or maybe this was just his way of making her work for it.  
       Finally she spotted him coming out of the back door of the school, and waved. They walked together to his black Lexus, a hand-me-down from his parents. She hesitated before getting in. That unpleasant I-can’t-breathe came over her in a wave. She closed her eyes tightly and forced herself to calm down. “What if he notices how weird you’re acting and how nervous you are?” a self-conscious voice echoed in the back of her mind. She opened one eye to survey Gavin, who was staring at her expectantly from the driver’s seat. She opened her other eye. “Fuck, he’s enjoying watching me squirm, isn’t he?” She patted little-Gavin from outside her bag, then opened the door and slid into her seat.

       Once they were parked in the driveway of the Pink Palace, Gavin snaked an arm around Coraline’s shoulders.  
       “So babe, you were saying something about making it up to me?”  
       “Yes... but not here. My dad will freak if he sees us. Tell you what, let’s go inside. I know a good place we can go. My neighbor is out of town and there’s a way to get into his flat from inside mine. And we’ll have the place to ourselves.”  
       This idea clearly piqued Gavin’s interest, so he followed Coraline inside. She led him up to the second-floor parlor.  
       “Pardon the dust, nobody hardly ever comes in here.”  
       Gavin’s brain had not even registered the dust. Especially not after Coraline bent down on all fours in front of the little door.  
       She fished the key out from under her school blouse, where it hung on a chain. “Here goes...” she muttered to herself. She opened the door up and gestured for him to go through. He momentarily seemed to weigh the nasty spiderwebs in the dirty crawlspace against getting laid in the extremely near future.  
       “After you, princess,” he said with a shrug.  
Coraline crawled in, and could feel Gavin entering behind her. The floor of the tunnel buckled and sagged beneath them. As she crawled, Coraline groped forward with one hand to sweep away spider webs. Soon enough she made contact with the door on the other end, and gave it a good push. She hastily scrambled out and did a full-body shiver of disgust, attempting to shake the clinging filaments from her hair and body. Gavin clambered out shortly after her and stood up, surveying the space.  
       “Your neighbor is clutch,” he remarked appreciatively.

       The Other apartment appeared to have the same floorplan as Coraline’s, but felt much more spacious and modern. The parlour in which they found themselves was done up in gleaming hardwood, chrome, and black leather. A minimalist wrap-around couch snaked along the wall next to them, making its way around to meet a mahogany steamer trunk bar sparkling at the other end of the room. And along the north wall, where a fireplace stood in Coraline’s real home, a pair of frosted glass doors lead onto a balcony.  
Gavin sauntered over to the bar and helped himself to a crystal tumbler full of some amber liquor, saying, “I don’t think Mr. Neighbor will notice.” Then he slid open the doors and stepped out onto the small porch.  
       “No way!” he announced with obvious delight, “A hot tub!” Coraline, curious despite herself, joined him on the balcony to see for herself. He set his drink down on the railing and lifted off the heavy rainproof cover to reveal a cedar tub brimming with inviting, steamy water. He immediately stripped down and settled into the luxe spa, sipping his drink, and reveling in the trappings of a posh lifestyle like a pig in shit. Coraline shrugged and followed suit, taking off her school clothes and dropping them in an unceremonious heap on the floor of the cedar porch. She was surprised to discover that her ordinary cotton underwear had transformed into some unfamiliar red lacy number for the occasion.  
       “I always knew you were a little sex kitten underneath,” remarked Gavin as she joined him in the hot tub. The temperature of the water masked her angry flush.  
       Before she had much time to wonder what her next move was supposed to be, she heard footsteps and chatty voices inside the apartment.  
       “Girl! No fair starting the party without us!” said an obnoxious female who suddenly appeared on the porch. Gavin goggled at this newcomer and her companion, who were wasting no time stripping down themselves. They had the voices and bodies of cheerleaders, but were dolled up like Suicide Girls. They each had asymmetrical haircuts in color-blocked chunks of violet, platinum blonde, and Miss Clairol black. They had a lot of piercings, facial and otherwise, and so much heavy eye makeup that it took Coraline a moment to even realize their eyes were in fact black buttons.  
“I’m Spyder, and this is Amethyst!” said one, bubbling over with enthusiasm. “We’re Coraline’s best best friends! She didn’t tell us she was partying with such a hunk! No fair!” This last remark was accompanied by a playful splash and a giggle as the girls joined the two dumbstruck teens already in the hot tub.  
       They didn’t even give Coraline and Gavin a chance to respond to their arrival before one of them--Amethyst?--disappeared under the water. Gavin’s eyes rolled back in his head and he sank a few inches deeper into the water. The other girl continued to chatter inanely. Coraline wondered what the hell was going on, until she heard Gavin start emitting low moans. “Oh,” she thought, “ew.”  
She expeditiously exited the tub and wrapped herself in a maroon velour robe that she found waiting for her. Now that Gavin’s attention was elsewhere, she dropped the sexy-damsel act like a lead brick.  
       The scene before her was as fascinating as it was appalling. Coraline wondered whether Gavin even noticed the inhuman oculars of his new girlfriends, or whether he was so habitually conditioned to regarding women as objects that an additional marker of inanimacy flew under the radar. Did he not find it curious that the woman never peeked her head above the water to draw breath? Apparently not! His eyes were squeezed shut and he was biting his lower lip. Coraline felt vaguely voyeuristic for watching this; even though the dirty details were obscured by the roiling bubbles of the jacuzzi, the look on Gavin’s face was pornographic enough on its own.

       After a few minutes of this, Gavin let out a loud cry and Corline turned away, covering her face in disgust and embarrassment. When she turned back, he was resting his head on the side of the tub, panting heavily, and both girls were snaked around him, stroking his bare chest lasciviously. He had one-hundred percent lost interest in Coraline, thank merciful fuck.  
       One of the girls, the one whose hair was still dry, leaned over the side of the hot tub and retrieved a small black case. Coraline’s heart started pounding in her chest with bad associations, but she stood firm, anchored in place, eyes riveted. Was Gavin going to get converted, this soon? But no; the case contained something ironically more disturbing, which Coraline had only seen in movies but still recognized instantly.  
The wet-haired, breathing-is-optional girl tied a thin length of rubber around Gavin’s forearm and the other one busied herself with prep-work. For the second time that afternoon, Coraline turned away, fingers shuttered over her eyes. She really, really couldn’t deal with needles.  
       She heard a gasping, moaning sigh from Gavin, and then a horrifying, familiar voice began to speak. She tore her hands from her face and stared down her interlocutor, her amber eyes meeting the black buttons of the drug-pushing, blowjob-giving Suicide Girl. The girl spoke in a voice surpassing her physique by many decades. It was the voice of the Beldam.  
       “You owe me,” she said.  
       “Does that mean it’s done?” said Coraline, her mouth blessedly moving despite limited input from the rational part of her brain. Every part of her that had any sense was screaming internally for her to get the fuck out of there right the fuck now.  
       “I still need to cross the i’s and dot the t’s. But don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”  
       “Why do I owe you? I brought you a fresh soul.”  
       “You owe me because I’m going to look the other way while you abscond, despite my characteristic insistence on entrapping anyone who crosses over here. This little morsel is going to keep me entertained for quite some time!”  
       Coraline didn’t even wait for her to finish speaking. She ran for the little door, completely abandoning her clothes. The sound of sadistic giggles followed her through the musty tunnel like toilet paper stuck to a shoe. When she reached the other side, she turned the black key home and slammed her back against the door. She was still wearing that ridiculous velour robe.

       The Cat and Wybie watched her sudden entrance with twin wide-eyed stares.  
       “You are such a fucking moron,” said the Cat, telepathically and snidely. “Awakening a force like that for no good reason.”  
       “There was a fucking good reason,” countered Coraline. Wybie nodded aggressively. Then he leaned over and hugged her tight, velour and all, not letting go for several minutes.  
       “Is everything okay?” he asked after they pulled apart.  
       “Yes,” she said, with finality.


End file.
